Straight White American Jesus - Weekly Roundup: Jim Crow in a Suit and Tie
Aired: 2021-03-12
Duration: 05:30


=== Voter Suppression Concerns (04:47) ===

[00:00:00]  Axis Mundy Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
[00:00:29]  I'm Brad Onishi, faculty in religion, Skidmore College, and I'm here today with my co-host, I'm Dan Miller, associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
[00:00:40]  It's good to see you, Brad.
[00:00:41]  I think it's safe to say we're both continuing to lose our minds, like whatever minds we had.
[00:00:46]  They're thinner now, so I'll apologize to everybody now in advance of whatever we do for the next hour or so.
[00:00:53]  I hear you.
[00:00:54]  I look at March, and I give this talk to my students, that March is a faux amie.
[00:00:59]  It's a false friend.
[00:01:00]  You think in the school year, March is like, oh, Springtime!
[00:01:03]  I hear birds out my window.
[00:01:05]  It's time to look towards warmer weather and brighter days.
[00:01:10]  And in fact, there's still eight weeks left of the school year.
[00:01:13]  There's no light at the end of the tunnel.
[00:01:15]  And the weather's not as good as you think.
[00:01:17]  And you're so tired that even when you take a nap, you're like, I'm even more tired now.
[00:01:21]  So I don't know.
[00:01:22]  So Brad's reason for hope is going to be that we're almost halfway through March.
[00:01:26]  We'll just cut to that now.
[00:01:29]  All right.
[00:01:29]  So.
[00:01:32]  Let's talk about voter suppression.
[00:01:34]  And Dan, let's talk about voter suppression as an expression of Christian nationalism.
[00:01:40]  Here's what I mean by that.
[00:01:42]  John Kavanaugh, Arizona State GOP rep, says this this week.
[00:01:46]  There's a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans.
[00:01:49]  Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they're willing to risk fraud.
[00:01:53]  Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don't mind putting security measures in that won't let everybody vote.
[00:01:58]  But everybody shouldn't be voting.
[00:02:01]  Let me say that again.
[00:02:02]  But everybody shouldn't be voting.
[00:02:06]  This is a sentiment, Dan, that's been expressed throughout American history.
[00:02:09]  It's not new.
[00:02:10]  It's not modern.
[00:02:11]  It is as American as it gets.
[00:02:14]  Certain people who have power wanting to keep power by limiting the vote.
[00:02:20]  Perry and Whitehead came out with some great stats this week.
[00:02:23]  They looked at what happens to trends about voting and making it easy to vote before and after the election.
[00:02:32]  So they asked about this, they asked people this question, in some ways, I think we make it too easy to vote.
[00:02:39]  In October 2020, if you look at the chart and I can post this later, right, you have a kind of line that with very liberal people all the way to very conservative people goes from zero to like 23% on that, right?
[00:02:52]  So very few people think we make it too easy to vote before the election.
[00:02:56]  After the election, if you look at the line, among conservative and very conservative people, it goes up to over a third among conservatives and almost to 50% among very conservative people.
[00:03:09]  Meaning Trump lost, the GOP lost power in the House of Congress, And what happens?
[00:03:16]  People think it's too easy to vote, just like Kavanaugh in Arizona says.
[00:03:20]  This comes on the heels of 253 new bills across 43 states to suppress the vote.
[00:03:27]  In Arizona, a state House committee approved a bill that would turn the state's permanent early voting list into one that drops those who skip consecutive election cycles.
[00:03:38]  On Monday, last week, the state Senate approved a bill that would require voters to submit identification paperwork with their mailed-in ballots.
[00:03:45]  Instead of the state's current system of matching signatures on ballot envelopes with voter signatures on file.
[00:03:51]  So, you would have to include affidavits with your date of birth and driver's license, state ID, or tribal ID card and number.
[00:04:00]  You could also use a utility bill.
[00:04:02]  There are many concerns here about identity theft.
[00:04:05]  In Iowa, there's a law that cuts Iowa's early voting period from 29 days to 20.
[00:04:12]  Polls will now close at 8 p.m.
[00:04:13]  rather than 9 p.m.
[00:04:15]  This is in the wake of high voter turnout in Iowa.
[00:04:19]  No proof of any sort of voter fraud or voter issues in the state, and yet the conservative state legislature and the governor decided this was a good idea.
[00:04:30]  The law significantly tightens the rules for when absentee ballots must be received by county auditors in order to be counted.
[00:04:38]  Ballots must now arrive by the time polls close in order to be counted.
[00:04:42]  Previously, ballots placed in the mail the day before would be counted.
[00:04:46]  And that's from the Des Moines Register.

=== Iowa's Voting Rules Tighten (00:42) ===

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